#till he gets his seat back in Alpha Tauri or Red Bull

[painandalsosuffering]

digital footprint goes crazy

[callmewrinkles3]

Phone Call

Summary: While sitting waiting for their hotel room to be available the day after Silverstone, Em gets a phone call that changes the rest of her year.

July 2023

It was supposed to just be an easy day, relaxing in the hotel while Blake and Dan had their meetings in Red Bull to prep for the tyre test and what Dan needed to do to be in contention for next year. A couple of hours later her phone rang, Em going out to the lobby to take the call.

“Hey Baby, what’s happening?”

“I know we said next year. I know. But how do you feel about finding somewhere to live in Faenza for the rest of the year?”

Her heart felt like it had stopped. This year. She couldn’t believe it.

“Seriously? I’m in public I can’t really talk. But what’s the details?”

“Helmut gave Nyck till Silverstone to get on Yuki’s level, he hasn’t done it. If the tyre test goes well tomorrow then it’s mine if I want it. But I promised you this year. And you’re pregnant. You won’t be able to go to the last races. I just..fuck.”

“Will you regret it if you say no?” It was quiet between them for a moment, the ease between them simple.

“Yeah. I will.”

Em took a deep breath before looking around the hotel, spotting people in team gear. She’d said yes already, but this felt different. “Then you do it .”

“You sure you’re ok with me taking it?”

“Yeah. It’s not going to be easy, but we did it before. We can do it again. I can’t totally talk, but do it. It’ll be fine.”

“Thank you Emmy.”

“Go prove you deserve it. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Em stared at her tablet as she went back into the bar, staring at the mock up for the baby’s nursery that she’d been working on. Instead she pulled up one of her old travel spreadsheets and made a copy, getting to work with planning. This was going to be insane.

“What’s going on?” Charlie asked, Em shaking her head.

“It’s about what we talked about last night, Dan had to tell me something, I’ll tell you when we’re in one of the rooms?” Her words were clear enough that Charlie knew it was serious but didn’t reply, working out what she was doing for the week. It was working remote and running her sessions remotely where possible, but with the kids that wasn’t always a thing.

Finally Dan and Blake got back as their hotel rooms were ready, the four going up and piling into Dan and Em’s room. He’d organised a room with a balcony that looked over Silverstone for Em to watch the tyre test as he drove. When everyone was sitting down Dan spoke.

“If my times tomorrow are representative of the times I’ve been doing in the sim, I’ll be announced as an Alpha Tauri driver on Friday morning.”

The shock fully hit Em, staring at him as she felt the baby move. This is real. It’s happening. Oh god.

“Nyck’s seat?” Charlie asked and Dan nodded. “Does he know?”

“Marko gave him till Silverstone but he hasn’t improved. The gap with Yuki hasn’t changed at all. I think he thinks he’ll have till the summer but that won’t happen. Christian told me this is an audition for the big one. I heard some of the mechanics talking. Checo and Carola had a fight after the race on Sunday.”

“Poor girl.” Em was quiet for a moment. “So Friday? That’s soon. How does it feel?”

“Terrifying. But I’ll get there. You ready to be a wag again? Charlie are you ok with this? I know it wasn’t what you planned.”

“We’ll make it work. I…you belong in a car, Dan. You do. Blake and I can work out, right?”

“Yeah we will.” Em watched Blake take her hand and squeeze, holding onto her tightly. “Chuck comes first, if I need to go I’m going.”

“If you need to go I’m booking your flight myself. You made sure Dan and I made things work, it’s our turn now. But this is happening? We’re all good with it?”

“Yeah. It is. Fuck. I’m driving in a race in two weeks.”

After the four of them ate a late lunch they agreed to chill out in their own hotel rooms for the night. Dan pulled Em into his side as she ran her fingers through his curls.

“Have you told your parents yet?” Em asked quietly.

“Not yet. Not till it’s official? I don’t want them to think it’ll happen till it does. Plus they’ll ask about Mike and that…yeah. Fuck.”

“Oh Baby, I know. I know.” It still hurt that they didn’t speak anymore, that the hug she’d given him at Silverstone was the only time she’d seen him since her wedding. But she’d come home to see him leave the house in anger, Dan unwilling to talk about everything in their fight. She still missed her big brother so much, and spending weekends in the same hotel and garage would be surreal.

“Fuck. It’s just shit. He was my best man and two days later. It’s shit.”

“I know. And I can’t say anything else. But you won’t be working closely with him. And maybe it’ll thaw things.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Em kept running her fingers through his hair, kissing Dan’s forehead. It had to be ok. It had to be.

[russilton]

I go absolutely feral whenever you post something about redbull george man, the thought you put into it is so impressive! I was also wondering how the public feels ab redbull george, do they dislike him? Love him? Hate him with all their being?

🥹🥹🥹 I am glad my ferality is being mirrored by others. I havent through a lot about public reaction to George bc most of the story is told within the paddock via Lewis, but I’m sure I can think of a bit

Edit: this is mark who just finished writing this response, an hour later. I thought of more than a bit.

Redbull au spoilers under the cut let’s goooo

The public opinion on George is about as mixed as it is on Lewis. Some people love him, some people HATE him, and those opinions develop throughout the year

The first time he gets into the Red Bull seat opinions are truly split on him. Some people think he’s just another Red bull second seat filler destined to fail, after all they’ve watched Daniil, Pierre, and most recently Albon get traded around like stocks. It doesn’t help that George is quite publicly cocky, he doesn’t overstate himself, but he did spend 2020 turning the Alpha Tauri car into a beast that even pierre couldn’t match. He’s bold, confident, and has a PR face that other RB drivers struggled with.

Some people think George is the next big thing. Some genuinely see his talent within AT and his F2 Championship as a sign of things to come, a lot like Williams George has. It’s no secret a lot of people often look for literally any chance to shit on Lewis, George is an unfortunately good outlet for that, especially for Unsavoury (read: racist) british fans who want to champion someone other than Lewis, but would rather support another Brit than some Dutch prick. George is quite… publicly critical of this. He’s a dick but he doesn’t want people who support him just for not being Lewis. I won’t say he’s some saint because he isn’t, but George is a big fan of Lewis, he always has been, and he kneeled alongside him in the RB au just as IRL George did. RB management weren’t particularly happy about that one, but they found a way to spin George as good PR and a shield they could use to excuse some of Max’s more shit behaviour.

Once the season starts, opinions split even further. His confidence is a turn off for some, and a turn on for others, and when George starts to get into more scuffles on track with Lewis that just grows. Red bull fans will take any chance to make George a saint that’s the thorn in Lewis’ side, someone who’s making the humble king crack. More passionate Mercedes fans see him as an annoyance who should get out of Lewis’ way, an overconfident asshole who thinks he’s hot shit. A lot of midfield fans like George, he fights clean and strong, and people love a good overtake fight, George and Lewis provide that. People love to share gifs of Lewis’ clenched jaw as he watches George on the podium next to him, the wink George gives him back. There’s also photos of Lewis winking down at an unimpressed George on third. A Brit on Brit rivalry gets people hot, and it helps both George and Lewis are very respectful in interviews about each other. They’ll tease, George will say he thinks someone of Lewis’ experience shouldn’t have left certain gaps for him, Lewis will raise a brow and return that perhaps George needs to remember who overtook him after. Their banter and fights are foreplay for them but with the nature of the internet some people are sure they want to kill each other. A small subsection of tumblr and twitter think they’re fucking. They are correct.

This sort of love him or hate him attitude continues till around the middle of the first half of the season, when Red Bull fans start to be concerned that George is “spoiling” Max’s shot at a WDC. There are still far more max fans than George, after all dutch stoic ness people tend to brush away, British arrogance (somewhat rightfully) doesn’t go down as well. Mercedes fans don’t like George, but he is often used to point to how max could behave on track in a similar car. Hate him all you want George is behaved. As redbull slowly pile the pressure on George to submit to Max, so does the public. In the wake of Silverstone George is blamed for not being able to ‘protect’ max from Lewis, that that’s his job as second. When George hands a win to Lewis in Hungary as a “fuck you im not second driver”, shouting and conspiracy theories run abound. Everything from “he’s just in redbull to screw with max and help another Brit, he’s Lewis’ bitch” to “Actually george is worse than max but the team are biased” to the slightly more correct “George is actually better but being screwed over”. Merc fans don’t know how to react to George giving lewis the win. Nobody likes admitting that Lewis would have deeply struggled to get past without it, so some say George lost his mettle or the car had a mechanical failure.

Summer break silence and this love hate feeling continues, when they come back and George is struggling suddenly people are quick to crow about the second seat curse, that he was never actually that good. People who liked George for challenging max go quiet, ones that liked how he challenged lewis stop paying attention, and it’s a good thing George largely avoid social media because that just leaves some fans and a lot of livid Red bull fans who are ready to spew acid at George. Some still adore him of course, he’s the second man to their goat max, spoiler of Mercedes’ day, but Their praise makes George feel somewhat sick. He thinks he might actually throw up at the cheers he gets at Zandvoort as Lewis is Boo’d.

After the Russia crash, most RB fans left turn on him. He’s blamed utterly and completely for the incident by Red bull and they don’t even think to question it. He’s just like Pierre and Alex, he’s lost his mettle, they want to shame him for his confidence in the early season, they don’t know George is practically driving one handed with all he’s asked to test. To them, George is failing to defend max, or at worse hampering him. The abuse he gets after Russia and mexico is brutal. George is curling into himself too, his interviews are far different to early season, they’re clipped, his answers vauge, and the PR face is in full force. There are memes made of his tense blank face when Max overtakes him without a fight in Turkey, they don’t know George is trying not to hurl in some of those interviews. Most Merc fans are indifferent to him, they wish he’d go back to causing max trouble again, but he doesn’t cause Lewis issues either, so they don’t much care. At the end of the season redbull fans hate him because they blame max loosing the WDC on George not stopping Lewis. They don’t know that honestly George probably would have been the one fighting Max, or the one against Lewis if not for how he’s handicapped. George’s post race interview is praised for how he congratulates Lewis and speaks on how impressive his record breaking his, slipping just a little when he mentions how Lewis had inspired him. People blame Brit on Brit bias but people do like to discuss and debate George mentioning not wanting to cause a safety car, and how that perhaps contributed to Lewis’ win.

So, post season, Mercedes’ fans generally don’t love him, or just don’t care about him. Red Bull fans either view him as a failure, spoiler, or that he just dropped the ball, there’s a lot of back and forth on if he should be continuing to next year or replaced. Some say he’s clearly a more stable option than Alex or pierre, other days his performance drop is reason enough to drop him. Midfield fans are mixed on him too, but he’s generally agreed to be a promising talent, but very green.

When the Mercedes announcement happens, the internet explodes.

A driver moving to another team from RB hasn’t happened since Daniel and look how that went, but holy shit to the rival team? Unthinkable. Some are convinced George is giving up his shot at winning, clearly red bull is on the come back. Ardent Red bull fans accuse him of being a traitor, unfaithful and a terrible person for not sticking with the team that trained him. They don’t know about the abuse behind the scenes, to them it’s almost conspiracy worthy. Some people are confused as to how it even happened, don’t teams have anti competing clauses? How could Red bull let this happen? Some think it MUST be on purpose, trying to convince Toto to hire a bad driver and bring them down (they don’t love to point out the last time christian did that was when Toto signed Lewis, and how’d that work out?)

Mercedes fans don’t trust him. There’s varying ranges to it, some people think he’s a spy obviously going to send details to Red bull, how could Toto hire such an obvious traitor. Some think he’s being hired to replace Lewis and consider it either idiotic or outright evil actions on Toto’s part. Again they can’t see that George would rather stab himself than talk to Christian again, and that he has Lewis to vouch for him, and George’s early season performance is a fairly reasonable justification not to like him.

Lewis keeps him off the internet, drags George out over the Christmas break to just hang out, when George isn’t with his family. When it’s time for George to start working at Brackley in January, Lewis comes with him a lot of days. He says it’s just that he’s working too, and George accepts that. Toto and Bono share glances knowingly about how there’s no way on earth Lewis needs to keep coming in, and he certainly didn’t for Val. Susie figures out that they’re tentatively dating first, because she’s more observant than all of them, but she keeps it to herself. She does make Toto invite the poor boy over during the holidays with Lewis, to welcome him into the Mercedes’ family. Susie knows a boy who needs maternal and paternal adults around when she sees one, and she certainly couldn’t do it to Lewis lol.

When the new season starts, Lewis deliberately encourages a lot of interviews with George, so people can see them getting on. It helps George can finally talk publicly about how much he likes how Lewis drives and how helpful he is behind the scenes. Merc fans do slowly come round on him as George proves to be an even stronger second driver than Val, and a solid team player who the Merc team loves. I def have thoughts about a Canada style team dinner where there’s a sneaky photo of Lewis, George and Valtteri all sat together laughing at something, Lewis with a casual arm around George’s shoulder and Val, still in his AR gear being included within Merc as family

I thought this reply would end up being so short it would make the readmore overkill. I WAS WRONG.

[dizzyduck44]

What have Red Bull got against Lando Norris?

So as anyone who has seen the latest episode of McLaren Unboxed will know, during the Portuguese Grand Prix someone from Red Bull threw a paper airplane at Lando with a printed message/threat “Don’t get in our way again”.

Now why are Red Bull being outwardly aggressive towards another driver? Well what follows are my musings on why at least one person at Red Bull might have an unanswered question when it comes to Lando.

Our story starts back when Lando was a teenager. He spoke about being invited to meet Helmut Marko in Monaco on the Grand Prix weekend. After a few basic pleasantries Lando recalls being asked “how much does your F3 car weigh?” Completely thrown by the question he didn’t have an answer but he remembered the reply he got from Marko, “Max would know”. Lando mused that Red Bull never offered their junior programme to him so he mustn’t have made a good impression. Marko had effectively dismissed him as not worthy.

That is until 2018, Lando is leading the F2 championship and has been setting impressive times in testing and practices for McLaren who have made him a development driver. Red Bull and Toro Rosso are in turmoil. Danny Ric has made a shock decision to leave and go to Renault, Gasly will be moved up to the main team, Sainz has been released from his Red Bull contract and they have decided to bin off Hartly. Sadly the Red Bull junior programme is out of drivers with a super licence. So Marko again turns to Lando, threatening to the press if McLaren don’t give him the 2019 drive he will put him in a Toro Rosso. McLaren’s swift announcement in the July that Lando would drive for them next season shut that down however this was the second time Marko had looked at Lando as an asset to Red Bull but not really meant it.

Then there is the small issue of Max and Lando being friends. To a lot of us it still seems a strange pairing but it does make sense. They have similar interests and having never raced each other till F1 there was no chance they carried grudges from junior categories. However this did bring about a chink in Max’s nothing bothers me act. Lando is a sarcastic and sometimes brutally honest friend who on more than one occasion has said something to Max and there is a slight flicker when you can see it’s hit Max hard and then he quickly reverts to laughing it off. Lando can upset and bother Max, that probably does not endear him to Dr Marko and Mr Horner and let’s be honest, it’s dangerous to them.

However none of the above really matter while Lando was pootaling around in a midfield car scraping out lower point scoring results. Marko was clearly right to dismiss him. Except now in 2021, Lando is in the mix of things. Since Abu Dhabi last year we have seen the kid that dominated junior categories with speed and consistency reappear. Honestly I don’t think it’s surprised anyone in the paddock, but maybe they didn’t expect it for another couple of years.

Now Red Bull are faced with a real shot at a championship and a pesky McLaren that keeps being a stumbling block. In Imola, Lando nearly out qualified Max. He certainly outraced Checo that day. At Portimao it seemed to be two days of blame Lando for everything. My favourite being “he overtook me off the track” “when I looked in my mirrors he had all four wheels over the line”. If you can see him in your mirrors Sergio he’s still behind you.

So is this sudden character attack by Red Bull really steeped in one issue? Lando could’ve may be been sat in that other Red Bull seat, at worst in an Alpha Tauri right now, but if he continues to be the thorn in the side of Red Bull this season then they really only have themselves to blame. Has Helmut Marko got this wrong?

Personally I think the Red Bull programme would have probably destroyed Lando so in reality this has worked in his favour, however having printed threats sent to you, even if meant as a joke, he has certainly rattled at least one person at Red Bull and I don’t think it’s Max!